I sure hope not... because a good number of the rpg game designers are hopeful fantasy authors. Not in our best interest to kill fantasy when we want to write it ourselves. Of course because of that we end up coming up with some very interest plot points in our works... things that would work quite well in novels... so it is unlikely that they will stay as new territories for long.

Anyone who has ever read the Dragonlance books will know just how badly it can go if you transcribe game stuff directly back into books.

I think that the Malazan series started of as an RPG setting and then developed into novels and the world building has certainly paid off in that respect because by cunningly exposing it layer by layer the depth and magnitude of the story is beautifully manipulated.

One advantage the book has is you can tell the characters where to go and what to do. It is very hard to create any kind of meaningful emotional connection with characters in a game because either the character you're playing is a silent cypher or you have only very limited freedom in what you make them say or do, like a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

Also, anyone who has ever been a GM will observe that the moment you become a player you instantly halve your IQ and start doing totally random and stupid stuff.

I think books are safe for now, and when AI gets up to a standard that credible worlds can exist in computer games then we'll need some good in-game books to make the world more credible.

Thinking about it Bethesda had loads of books in Oblivion, maybe that is one route that authors of the future will choose to take...

You don't read much actual fantasy, do you? Because if you do, I sincerely doubt that you'd be asking these questions. In fact, you'd know that you don't need to ask these questions.

Sharon Shinn--shapeshifters and angels. Michelle West--elemental magic. Fiona McIntosh--body jumpers. Lorna Freeman--elves, magic, and mystical beings. P. C. Cast--portals, centaurs. Trudi Canavan--magician guilds, deities at war. George R. R. Martin--dragons, politics. Lynn Flewelling--necromancers, shapeshifting, elves. James A. Hetley--portals, dragons. S. L. Farrell--dragons, magical beasties, magic stones. Michelle Sagara--dragons, mystical runes, winged humaniods.

There's your tropes. Except that they're NOTHING like an MMORPG or a tabletop roleplaying game. Most non-media fantasy being published doesn't follow along with the ideas found in RPGs. These authors are creating their own worlds with their own rules that aren't dependent on any of the existing shared worlds. They're not being squeezed out of anywhere. Don't think for a moment that the so-called territory of fantasy has finite space. The only boundaries are imagination, talent, and craft.

And please don't forget that the focus of RPG mediums are completely different than the focus of fantasy writers. RPGs need to appeal to a broad crowd that need the mechanics of a game to make them work. Fantasy writers are presenting a story in situ for the readers to enjoy. Don't confuse the two. It's the difference between paint-by-numbers and looking at a picture that's already done--a rough analogy, but somewhat true.

I roleplayed for 17 years, and I've been writing off and on for that long, too. What's good for RPGs doesn't necessarily carry over into storytelling. They have different focuses, different needs, and different mediums. They're not really in competition with each other.

There are no unique selling points for any genre, any story, any RPG. We're all pulling from a world-wide pool of mythologies, religions, philosophies, experiences, and all the other things that churn together in the creative brains. No input, no output. It's the output that becomes unique, not where the ideas came from.

Go ye thereforth and read. Learn what is actually out there instead of making wild claims about quality and the future of fantasy.

And you're assuming that people care if there are three, thirty, or three thousand gold plated dragons on the shelf. Assuming that one of them is solid is irrelevant. As long as all the dragons look different and are entertaining to the eye/mind, that's what matters.

My point is that these people are using the tropes the original poster was complaining about, but in such ways that they weren't cliched.

Look at it this way. Say someone is obsessed with dragons. They'll buy dragons in any form they can get them, gold-plated, solid gold, silver, bronze, copper, plaster, pewter, clay, paintings, poo.... To this person, the medium (with maybe the exception of poo) doesn't matter. What matters is the level of artistry that goes into the dragon form. They're looking for the familiar, dragons, done in a way they haven't seen yet, that particular dragon. It won't matter how many faeries a seller waves in their faces; this person wants dragons, and dragons only.

Applied to dragon stories, well, Barbara Hambley doesn't write the same sort of dragons as Mercedes Lackey does, or as Lawrence Watts-Evans does, or or or. Someone who wants to write the next dragon-oriented book should know what's done and look for another slant, but if they're wanting to sell to dragon lovers, they'd better have dragons involved somewhere.

I'm not saying there's not good fantasy outside these tropes. Obviously there is. But it's not what I want to read. I like reading epic/heroic/dark fiction that isn't urban fantasy, vampires, or werewolves. I used examples that I had on hand.

One key to remember is that people are looking for the familiar in the innovative. A pencil, no matter how fancied up and twisted into knots, still needs to be able to be sharpened and write. Form and function. Storytelling is no different.

And none of this is relevant to the original point of this post that I disagree with...that RPGs are crowding onto fantasy writing's turf. It's not. They're separate things appealing to two audiences that have only partial cross-over. While both sides may have dragons, faeries, elves, shapeshifters, etc., the only time the RPG component "contaminates" the fantasy side is when someone tried to cram RPG rules into a story. The results are rarely good. But to try to say that the RPG side is overriding or destroying the fantasy story side is...laughable.

I'd like to think that we all are, in our own ways, but some are doing it more than others. Part of the fun for me is trying to push into new territories and find different ways to explore old ideas - not necessarily the old tropes of dragons and so on (although I doubt anyone's going to accuse me of that) but in the whole 'man has to face down his problems' sense. While the genre uses certain conventions in storytelling we're still telling the same basic stories as everyone else, so like every other writer we have to step into unexplored lands if we want to stay fresh. In fact, one might say that we're now facing some of the challenges once only applicable to the mainstream fiction writer.

I would be inclined to say that it not only benefits us as writers to be pushed that little bit further, but as readers also.

The idea of trying to teach a fantasy author of Mark's standing to suck eggs when it comes to fantasy brings to mind Goldfinger's famous quote: "Choose your next witticism carefully..."

Gave me a good chuckle, that.

I think that Mark raises a perceptive point that in essence has to do with cross-pollenisation of mediums. This cross-pollenisation can very easily result in the 'conglomerate relativism' we are already subject to in what we buy in the high street, the software platforms we compute through and ultimately the purpose of any medium of art. For the purpose of any medium of art in the rapaciously commercial climate of today is to provide a basis for product, not the art in itself, which is a secondary consideration and only a primary one insofar as it doesn't conflict with the God of Product. The writer might want it, the art, to be foremost, the game designers (those I have met at press events have been first and foremost artists) might also want it to be so. But increasingly, it is rarely so. There are dissenters, of course. And thank goodness for it.

Yet increasingly we are getting short-hand representations of the original source, a package tour holiday experience of art to mimic what original travellers did in a given land. This to me only helps to reinforce the sort of relativism I personally am in opposition to and is ultimately the death of art, in any medium. One can see this in some great computer games of recent years which have been essentially dumbed down in their reincarnations for console sales (Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief and Oblivion to name but four), because that is where the dollars are. (I think the same is happening in prose, but that's another thread altogether.)

And while gerriwritinglog in one breath points up the essential otherness of each medium, in the next he says that it doesn't matter whether a representation of a dragon is solid gold or not; as long they are entertaining to the eye/mind, that's what matters. The last refuge of relativism that! For the art in itself no longer matters, merely the effect it can provide. Art of any substance then becomes only what an individual likes and is given pleasure by and no workable common consensus of artistic ability or achievement can stand - and that is the death of art.

I am a gamer, an avid one and wandering through the ashlands in Morrowind with that hauntingly lonely choir-like musical accompaniment is one of the most satisfying and vivid artistic experiences I have had in recent years, but not for one moment does it come close to the labyrinthine subtlety, symbolism and thematic tapestry of a superiorly crafted fantasy novel, with or without elves and any of the other well-worn tropes. Perhaps in part because the former is collaborative and perhaps in part because the gaming environment, however open-ended, however accessible the increasingly bolted on editing tool box is to create your own mods, remains a package tour experience as opposed to the deep inland travel of a sophisticated novel.

Given that I believe every story is reducible to only one narrative and every story is merely an extension of that one narrative, I fret but I do not despair. In a few years, RPGs cannot hope to achieve the heights that fiction has attained for a couple of thousand years since Homer from that single narrative strand.

Personally, whether my fantasy is or is not competent is a side issue, but that it doesn't contain elves or dwarves or dragons or evidence of any magic, that's as much a reason why I fear I will find it hard to get it published. So there is - oh yes - a market out there.

But what still matters is whether the dragons are solid or not. The cross-pollenisation between books and films and games can be an enlivening thing but it can also reinforce the march of the sort of conglomerate relativism that is more and more prevalent in which it doesn't matter whether the dragons are solid gold or not, as long as they are entertaining to the eye/mind. For then it is all merely relative. Then you have a product merely for time-passing consumption, but you no longer have art.

I had a bit of a chuckle I wonder if gerriwritinglog has ever read any of Mark's novels? I wonder if gwl has had a BFA award for best novella? My I did chuckle at their audacity.

But back to the topic. I can see where mrk is coming from. Look at the demise of the RPG. In the golden age of the eighties when I was playing MeRP, Rolemaster, Shadowrun, Amber etc etc etc... I was quite happy to have a few little Games Workshop stores dotted about, look at it now, where are the RPG shops? tucked away in obscure corners, or an afterthought in a bookshop.

Now when you go to Borders et al, there are whole sections devoted to game related books. While some of the little darlings will drift across to 'our' bit, many don't. But I do think there is a small plus. It raises the awareness of fantasy generally, and makes it more accessible. We have always been associated with the Freaks and the Geeks, now we have more of them to 'play with' so to speak thanks to WoW etc.

I guess only time will tell. We need to keep doing what we are doing, try and avoid the cliches, or make them more interesting, break molds and write good stuff.

One interesting point, I know Ray Fesit is not everyone's cup of tea, but Magician did make the Big Read top 100, and that was inspired by an RPG. So it can work the otehr way. I have to admit my 'Hannsu Chronicles' If I veer get them finished, were inspired by an RPG campaign I ran for ten years.

I am not sure they are mutually exclusive.

Paul Mather, aka Ex-Calibur.